News

Report: Amazon to launch movie download service

By LC Angell ● Friday, March 10, 2006

The New York Times reports that Amazon.com is currently in talks with three film studios about launching a paid service that would allow users to download movies and TV shows and burn them onto DVDs. Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers are the Hollywood studios reportedly in discussions with the internet retailer.

“If the advanced negotiations are successfully concluded, Amazon’s service would position itself in the media world alongside rivals like Apple’s iTunes as a place where people go not just to order goods to be sent by mail, but to instantly enjoy digital wares as well,” reports the Times. “Depending on the pricing of downloaded movies and the agreed split between the studios and Amazon, electronically selling DVD’s to consumers could represent a way to increase profit margins, as the overall growth of DVD’s has cooled.”

As previously reported, Amazon.com is also planning to launch a digital music service and Amazon-branded MP3 players. The Wall Street Journal said last month that the company is finalizing deals with music labels and could launch the service and portable devices as soon as this summer.

Comments

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Here’s what would be nice, and if they did this and it was Mac compatible why I’d go with Amazon over iTunes, if when you bought a movie on Amazon they gave you a download so you could watch it right away, and then sent out the DVD copy.

They probably won’t actually do this, but if it costs say six to ten dollars on top of the regular cost of a DVD to get instant access to a digital file that I could watch right away, or put on my iPod to watch, then I would pay that extra money.